Scarce Vision

“Capitalism isn’t scarce; vision is.”

-Sam Walton

Get GDP Growth and the US Dollar right and you’ll get mostly everything else right. Happy Thanksgiving.

The US Dollar is up another +0.5% this morning to $79.52 on the US Dollar Index, taking its week-to-date gain to +1.7%, and its cumulative gain since Bernanke signaled the end of Quantitative Guessing II to +8.9% (since April).

Given the generationally high inverse-correlations between the US Dollar Index and everything else, we continue to see what we’ve coined as a Correlation Crash across asset classes as a direct result of this bullish Buck Breakout.

S&P Futures are down another 9 handles to 1150 = down -15.6% since the US Dollar stopped going down in April

EUR/USD testing its early October lows of $1.32

European Equities selling off, across the board, to down -22-42% since February-April (pick your country)

Asian Stocks continuing their crash (down > 20% from their YTD highs) with HK and India down -27.5% and -23.5%

Commodities breaking down toward their October lows as the CRB Index’s correlation to the USD = -0.82

Gold is down another -1.1% to $1679 = down -11.6% from its all-time high in August

Correlation does not always imply causality. We get that.

But A) sometimes it does and B) it can be very reflexive in the immediate to intermediate-term.

Keynesian economists/strategists try to avoid Soros’ concept of “Reflexivity” in markets and economies as much as Global Macro investors are avoiding the Hungarian-American’s birthplace this morning (Hungary’s stock market trading down -4.6% after Moody’s cut Hungary’s credit rating to junk).

Academic types have a hard time using markets as leading indicators because they have no experience managing real-time market risk. That’s a problem - a really big problem with US economic policy.

Policy = Causality.

That’s why you’ve never heard Ben Bernanke or Tim Geithner use these 2 words - Correlation Risk – to attempt to explain anything about nothing that’s happening in either Global Macro markets or the economies that underpin them.

Accepting responsibility for causality, after all, would be an admission of failed policy. At least Greenspan admitted this in 2008. Maybe Bernanke will by the time he is retired from the Fed too…

The Germans kind of get this. That’s primarily because they have to. The German People will not give the fiscally conservative leadership of the Bundesbank a hall pass on forgetting the history of hyper-inflation. At least not yet.

German stocks are down another -0.54% this morning, taking the DAX down to 5398 (down -28.2% since the US and German stock markets put in their 2011 YTD highs). If the SP500 was down that much from its April 2011 closing high (1363), it would be trading at 979 this morning. The German People aren’t as hyper about their stock market as our manic media culture is.

If I’ve said this 100 times in the last 4 years, I’ve written and/or said it 1000 times – the immediate to intermediate-term moves in a country’s stock market does not exclusively reflect a country’s long-term health. Currency stability, inflations/deflations, and employment levels are, collectively, much better long-term barometers for purchasing power and prosperity.

I could write a book about that – and maybe I will – but that’s not going to happen in the remaining 10 minutes I have to finish this note this morning. So hopefully it continues to provide a basis for long-term economic debate.

The Scarce Vision that policy makers in this country have displayed over the course of the last decade is not what we should be thankful for this Thanksgiving. What we should all be thankful for is a generational opportunity in America to change that.

My immediate-term support and resistance ranges for Gold (bearish TRADE and TREND), Brent Oil (bearish TRADE and TREND), German DAX (Bearish Formation) and the SP500 (Bearish Formation) are now $1, $105.13-109.98, 5, and 1154-1196, respectively. With the US Dollar immediate-term TRADE overbought today, plenty of market prices will be oversold.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your loved ones,

KM

Keith R. McCullough Chief Executive Officer

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11/25/11 06:02 AM EST

Are Banks Good Businesses?

Future Generations

This note was originally published
at 8am on November 21, 2011.
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“We are scattering the substance that belongs to future generations.”

-Irving Fisher

“In 1908, after the assassination of President McKinley, Fisher was appointed by his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, the youngest President of the United States, to the National Conservation Commission.” (Sylvia Nasar, “Grand Pursuit”, page 164).

Commissions and committees have been around forever. In times of crisis, successful leadership by government committee has rarely worked. Ultimately, a super-sizing of that committee concept isn’t going to work this time around either.

By 1909, Congress refused further funding of the National Conservation Commission. Today, they’d probably try to double or triple down on the idea as long as there were some bridges, roads, and teaching jobs to spinoff from it as “economic growth.”

The problem, of course, is that no matter what the American Keynesians try to do, the world’s economic growth continues to slow. As cyclical Growth Slowing in Asia and European Stagflation becomes more clear, Global Equity markets are becoming more red.

On the heels of last week’s nasty -16.2% year-over-year export slowdown in Singapore, the Monetary Authority of Singapore said: “The world economy and financial system are at their most fragile state since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis.”

Much to Timmy Geithner’s centrally planned chagrin, Singapore is China’s trusted economic advisor. When they say something like this – they mean it – and a man-made US committee isn’t going to be able to slow its implications.

Back to the Global Macro Grind…

This morning’s Top 3 Headlines on my screens are: 1. Super-committee Fails, 2. Spain Elects Center-Right Government and 3. Packers Move to 10-0. So at least there’s one team out there who is still focused on winning instead of whining.

Asian and European stocks continue to crash and the so called “Santa Claus Rally” in US Equities has never looked so rouge. Last week we were offered plenty of warning signs – here were some of the more important Macro callouts:

US Dollar Index - had another solid week, closing up +1.45%, taking its cumulative gain since May to +6.8%

US Stocks – SP500, Nasdaq, and Russell2000 down -3.3%, -4.0%, and -3.4% on the week, respectively

US Equity Volatility (VIX) – up another +6.7% (up +113% since May)

Commodities (CRB Index) – down another -2.5% (down -14.5% since May)

Oil – WTIC down -1.6% vs Brent down -5.6% (breaking its TAIL line of $110/barrel support)

Gold – down -3.5% on the week closing barely above TREND line support of $1722/oz

Copper – down -1.7% and remains in a Bearish Formation (bearish TRADE, TREND, and TAIL)

US Treasuries – long-term bonds continued to rally, with 30-year yields falling another -4.5% on the week to 2.99%

US Yield Spread – continued to compress (another 10bps week-over-week) as growth continued to slow

Those were some of the more obvious leading indicators that a US centric stock market investor may have incorporated into his/her risk management view.

Some of the less obvious week-over-week Global Macro moves were as follows:

Argentina’s stock market down -8.1% (major funding issues continue)

France’s CAC40 Index was down another -4.8% (we’re short EWQ)

Austria’s stock market lost another -7.0% (moving YTD down to -38.1%!)

India led decliners in Asian Equities, moving back into crash mode at > -20% from YTD peak (down -4.8% wk)

Hang Seng down another -3.4% and continues to crash from YTD peak (we’re short EWH)

Natural Gas down -7.7% on the week making YTD lows

Palladium down -9% week-over-week

Cocoa down -7.3% week-over-week

Obvious or not to consensus, all of these risk factors are measurable and incorporated into our globally interconnected macro view. It’s a lot of work. And it can be as boring as the day is long – but someone has to be your Risk Manager. Risk never sleeps.

Bottom line from here: Get the US Dollar right, and you’ll get mostly everything else right.

That’s been our call since May, and we’re sticking to it.

Yale economist, Irving Fisher, certainly made his fair share of mistakes – but one of them wasn’t ignoring how mathematical realities could drive inflations and deflations of prices.

He called it the “Money Illusion” – and what he ultimately missed was how much debt could perpetuate price volatility. Hopefully, Future Generations of economists figure out that debt’s impact on economies and market prices are not illusions. They are real-time.

My immediate-term support and resistance ranges for Gold, Brent Oil, CAC40, and the SP500 are now $1707-1738, $106.11-110.29, 2911-3135, and 1199-1240, respectively.

Covering France (EWQ) and EUR-USD (FXE): Trade Update

Keith covered France via the eft EWQ and EUR-USD via FXE in the Hedgeye Virtual Portfolio today with the CAC40 approaching our oversold level of 2,801 and EUR-USD approaching our oversold level of $1.32. We opportunistically covered EWQ, however remain bearish on the country over the long term TAIL duration (see chart below). The CAC40 is down -28% since its end of June high. We took the other side of Goldman Sachs currency analyst Thomas Stolper’s bullish call on the EUR-USD on November 11th and shorted FXE in our portfolio. We’ll cover here with Goldman capitulating on the call today and the cross approaching our $1.32 line, but remain bearish on the Euro's intermediate-term TREND.

France remains an important EU country in the crosshairs—constrained by fiscal pressures (debt and deficit) and a web of cross-country sovereign banking exposure, the two combined put pressure on the country’s AAA credit rating. Today, Fitch Ratings warned that France’s AAA credit rating would be at risk if crisis intensifies.

On 10/18 we penned a note titled “France is Going to Get Downgraded”, and made the important point that there exists an enormous outsized risk to the entire European bailout project for sovereigns and banks should France lose its credit rating: essentially the entire EFSF would be jeopardized, as France is the second largest contributor of collateral to the facility, at 22%, behind Germany at 29%.

From the fiscal side, France’s public debt as a % of GDP is likely to hit 88.4% this year, near the important 90% (and above) level that Reinhart and Rogoff outline in their seminal book This Time is Different as prohibitive to growth. Through austerity, the government hopes to bring down the budget deficit, forecast to hit 5.7% of GDP this year, to 3% in 2013, or in compliance with the EU’s Growth and Stability Pact. Nevertheless, there’s been great push-back to Sarkozy’s austerity programs (including the most recent €8 Billion in additional budget cuts), which has also eroded his polling results for elections next April.

On the banking side, France is the largest holder of Italian public debt ($106.8B) and private debt ($309.6B) of any country according to June BIS report, which compounds risk given Italy’s own debt imbalances and investor uncertainty around leadership in the wake of Berlusconi.

Early this month Sarkozy’s government revised GDP to 1.0% in 2012 versus a previous estimate of 1.75%. Politically, Sarkozy remains faced with high unemployment, at 9.2% (vs 7% in Germany), or 22.8% among the French youth, and unlike Germany does not have the ability to cushion slowing growth through exports.

Matthew Hedrick

Senior Analyst

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11/23/11 11:06 AM EST

Retail: Key 4Q Themes

Conclusion: Here’s some of the most telling management quotes from 3Q, as well as our take on three important themes. With higher opex in 4Q – some which has been deferred – and 5 quarters of Inv/Sales erosion, elasticity will be a major factor in flushing out margins.

In looking back over Q3 results, several notable themes have emerged from Retail. Most notably, they related to the following…

Driving Operating Expenses Higher. This was a common theme across all sub-categories -- especially among the poorer quality companies that need to catch up on years of deferred spending. Whether it be in the form of incremental marketing, added head count, or various IT improvements (e.g. mobile POS functionality), retailers are having to work harder and spend more to drive sales.

Price Elasticity. Simply put, the better the product, the lower the elasticity. This has nothing to do with price. It’s all about perceived value.

The Inventory Growth/Gross Margin Trade-Off. Five sequential quarters of sales/inventory erosion without commensurate decline in margins is absolutely unsustainable. There’s meaningful Gross Margin risk if the consumer does not comp the 5.2% holiday performance from last year.

Here’s a quick look at some key commentary from management teams, as well as our take…

1) Elasticity:

HBI: “While units have declined, sales dollars are still quite strong. And even with the third price increase that was effective in late September, sell-through data across our major accounts indicate elasticity is at or better than our expectations…” – CEO Rich Noll

CRI: “Excluding Canada, we're forecasting inventory units at year-end to be up slightly over a year ago, with dollars up in the low 20% range reflecting largely the ongoing impact of higher product costs.” – CEO Michael Casey

GPS: “You put your plan together. Consumers respond to it, or in some cases, in Old Navy's case in October with their comp, did not respond to a level we had hoped for, so we have to make some adjustments and make sure we're aggressive in terms of our pricing, sharpen up our value proposition, and make sure we're prepared to compete in the fourth quarter… Strategically, I said in the opening comments, we have to broaden the bands of our pricing. We've been testing this, we just didn't do it all of a sudden. We've been trying that in certain categories and we've been getting good response.” – CEO Glenn Murphy

TGT: “As we expected, our guests have demonstrated a propensity to spend about the same dollar amounts through this period as they otherwise might have, essentially managing their household budgets by decreasing the number of units purchased.” – CFO Doug Scovanner

JCP: “We are on track the first couple weeks in November. We are seeing the kind of increase in AUR that we planned and we are seeing the corresponding decrease in units that we planned. So I think that we have every reason to believe at this point in time in the fourth quarter that we are on track to achieve our AUR expectations and that we will have the units necessary to take care of Christmas.” – CEO, Mike Ullman

DKS: “If we got into the gun and ammunition business, that's pretty price-sensitive business and that has not reacted particularly well to price increases. We take on the Nike side, the Under Armour side, if the brands bring to market great products, great designs, and technological advancements, the customers have pretty much stepped to the plate and said, yes, I need to have that product, whether it be increases in prices along key styles of football cleats, basketball shoes, running shoes, compression product, North Face products. Columbia has moved up their average unit retail with their Omni-Heat pretty substantially, and the customer has accepted that.” – CEO Ed Stack

GCO: “The overall theme is that ASPs were up. And for the obvious reason of the cost base driving costs to us in our branded businesses, and as we've discussed before, our expectation has always been that we get some of that back or all of that back, with retail price increases. And that's essentially the pattern we've been seeing.” – CEO Bob Dennis

PERY: “We have not been able to pass along full price increases to offset cost inflation in basic due to this fact. We have been able to get price increases in fashion goods, but in products where the consumer has not accepted the increases, retailers have had to be more promotional to move the inventory, which has resulted in higher markdowns. Our fall Perry Ellis Collection product did not perform to expectations. Some of the product that was not differentiated enough in the eyes of the consumer to warrant an increase in price, thus the value equation was wrong. We are looking at fourth-quarter increases in our organic store businesses of mid-to high single digits, driven by units down LSD, price increases in the HSD area, consistent with Q3.” – CEO George Feldenkreis

Hedgeye Retail: We think all the talk of high-end vs. low-end, is blown out of proportion. The bottom line here is that great product will not be price sensitive. Product that is ‘above average’ is on the fringe with price increases – in that perhaps a good process or marketing plan can make a difference. Product that is ‘average’ will have a problem. ‘Below average’ is a disaster.

2) Inventory/GM Trade:

GPS: “Our Q4 planned inventory unit buys are down. Similar to Q3, we expect our inventory dollars per store at the end of the fourth quarter to be up in the mid to high single digits.” – CFO Sabrina Simmons

CRI: “Overall the quality of our inventory remains excellent. Consistent with last quarter, roughly 5% of our inventory is characterized as excess, a consistent proportion of total inventory as a year ago. And we're well reserved for the expected losses on these items.” – CFO Rich Westenberger

PLCE: “When you look at the mall-based competition, we have kept our value space and kept notably below their price points 25% to 30%, but I think what we have seen there is we have seen very high inventory levels and very high degrees of promotion really all year. You can see it in the margins with the mall-based competitors and you can see it in the sales they are running. We don't anticipate, based on their inventory levels, that that is going to end anytime soon.” – CEO Jane Elfers

M:“Our stores are more set than ever for the holiday selling, and we hope that that pays off. Remember, though, that the higher in-transit will continue to be a factor at year-end, and at this point we expect to end the year with balance-sheet inventory up 6% to 7%, but comp-store inventory up less than half of that amount.” – CFO Karen Hoguet

JCP: “Our gross margin in the third quarter was impacted by the softer-than-expected selling environment, which resulted in higher promotional activity and more markdowns in the quarter.” – CFO Michael Dastugue

“The other half was in markdowns to clear the goods that -- we felt we needed to be in the right stock position coming into the fourth quarter. We are very satisfied with what we own today in terms of inventories appropriate for the fourth quarter. I would say as to the outlook for the fourth quarter, the reason we feel more confident about maintaining the margin at flat or slightly down is that, last year, we had a very difficult margin for the fourth quarter.” – CEO Mike Ullman

DKS: “Merchandise margin increased as a percentage of sales, primarily due to the continued effective inventory management, as evidenced by less clearance activity compared with last year and a shift in product mix...Meanwhile, inventory per square foot increased only 0.1%. On a consolidated same-store basis, our sales increased 4.1%.” – CEO Ed Stack

DLTR: “Consolidated inventory per selling square foot decreased by 1.2%. Inventory turns have been increasing for the past six years, and we expect this trend to continue for the full year of 2011. We have gotten better with looking at stores as far as clustering them and determining how to open them up, what inventory categories are going to be important store by store. So a lot of it is technology that we have been able to implement and continue to gain efficiencies that have continued to help us.” – CEO Bob Sasser

BKE: “Last year, we felt like we missed some business by being too low on our denim inventory, as well as certain top categories, and also in the men's outerwear, we did not have everything shipped to us last year, so we improved our inventory position there. So we felt that our inventory -- we wanted to capitalize on some of opportunities for holiday on several of those categories.” – CEO Dennis Nelson

Hedgeye Retail: Inventories have come down over each of the last two quarters, but not at the rate they need to in order to avoid a scenario where retailers are forced to get increasingly more aggressive on pricing. We’ve seen deterioration in the sales/inventory spread in apparel for five consecutive quarters without meaningful Gross Margin erosion. That is simply (and mathematically) not sustainable.

3) Accelerated SG&A/Marketing Spending:

VFC: “As we entered the year, what we indicated was, for the fourth quarter, that we thought our marketing spend could actually be down a little bit in the fourth quarter given that, given that we were up against such a -- that big increase in 2010 ($45mm in Q4 and an incremental $100mm in FY10). But at this point in time, we are spending some more. Again, we have seen such great success relative to our overall marketing spend and the investments that we have been making beyond on our brands. We are convinced that it at least plays a part in terms of the momentum that we are seeing. So at this point in time, we will spend more in the fourth quarter than we did over the high level of last year.” – CFO Bob Shearer

UA: “While we expect a generally consistent level of dollars spent as implied in our prior guidance, our higher top line guidance should allow us to leverage this line to a greater extent. We now expect marketing spending as a percentage of net revenues between 11.2% and 11.3%. This additional leverage in marketing will be offset by higher spending in selling costs related to our direct to consumer business as we continue to invest to drive current and future growth.” – CFO Brad Dickerson

GPS: “One of the big investments we've made and I'm comfortable doing it, is to make sure we continue to keep up a fairly aggressive level of marketing in 2011, 2012, and probably beyond.” – CEO Glenn Murphy

DKS: “But I think that most of our issues from the outdoor standpoint were really self-inflicted, from what we did from a marketing standpoint, and as we kind of moved into the third quarter, we thought that we would be more aggressive and we would change some of those marketing dollars back to that category of business, and we're pleased with the results.” – CEO Ed Stack

PSS: “Our marketing is increased for next year into 2012 and will be refocused obviously as it relates to our ongoing strategy. So the messaging is segmented proportionately to our strategy.” – CEO Payless ShoeSource LuAnn Via

“We are looking to reallocate some of the money that we spend, and, for instance, we are looking to spend a relative amount more on marketing, but we are looking to take other expenses out. And we are looking to invest where we can grow and invest to connect with consumers and invest in the front end and customer facing.” – CAO Doug Treff

Hedgeye Retail: We’re going to start to see a lot of deferred SG&A spend. Unfortunately for those companies, the ones that they’re catching up to are still putting coin to work. We’re going to see competitive spreads widen.

Take a look at the industry SIGMA for Q3-to-date. Operating margins have improved on the margin which is good, but the sales/inventory spread essentially remained flat – not good at all. Rather than getting more aggressive in flushing out inventories headed into what is lining up to be a highly competitive holiday season, the industry sacrificed some sales to improve profitability over the short-term at the expense of risking greater deterioration in profits over the intermediate-term. As we have seen over the last several months, sales are decelerating. One of the key factors that has propped up consumer spending to date has been a reduction in the personal saving rate. While it could go lower, we don’t expect to see it with home values continuing to decline.

Inventories have come down over each of the last two quarters, but not at the rate they need to in order to avoid a scenario where retailers are forced to get increasingly more aggressive on pricing. We expect the worst of it to play out in the domestic mid-tier market.

Shorts: JCP, HBI, CRI, SHLD

Longs: NKE, LIZ, WMT, RL

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11/23/11 10:36 AM EST

Not Good: SP500 Levels, Refreshed

POSITION: Long Healthcare (XLV)

Long anything here is not good. The SP500 is in a Bearish Formation (bearish across all 3 risk management durations):

TAIL resistance remains up at 1270

TREND resistance (was support) now at 1203

TRADE support is loosely held at 1158

I think the bulls are trapped for now and have to sell all bounces provided we remain < 1203.

King Dollar is breaking out. The Correlation Crash remains a very relevant risk.

KM

Keith R. McCullough Chief Executive Officer

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